


Day 16: Final Frontier 'Verse: Between the Stars

by JessaLRynn



Series: Destiel Smut Brigade AU Challenge [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alien Castiel, Alternate Universe - Space, Captain Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Frottage, Gen, M/M, Married Sam, Science Fiction, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:57:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're far from home and they won't be getting back there.  Dean and the crew of the Black Impala are still stubbornly trying, though, with the help of an alien, the Seraph Castiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 16: Final Frontier 'Verse: Between the Stars

The Final Frontier 'Verse: Between the Stars

The stars out here don't shine quite so brightly, Dean thinks, as they did back in their home galaxy. Here, the spaces between are darker, the distance more pronounced and far less welcoming. All his life, he's been a stranger to the planets and space stations that made up the SPN Leagues that were his home, but his nomadic family had never been so lost as they are, here and now, in the dark depths of a part of space utterly unknown to mankind. They will never see the stars of the Milky Way again, not within generations, but they still fight, and still they are loyal, and Dean has never felt more guilty in his life. 

He's brought them all here, captained the Black Impala and all her company to their slow and difficult doom, and he can't understand how he's still got them believing he knows what he's doing. If there are four corners of the Universe, then Dean has landed his people - his family - in a fifth corner that no one even thought possible. There's Bobby and Ellen, like parents to him and his brother Sam; Ashe and Jo, who left behind sweethearts they will never touch again; Charlie, who has fallen hard twice for alien lovers who can't go with them; Frank, who didn't even ask to be here; Krissy, whose father was killed in the wild transition that spat them out further from their home than their minds can really contemplate. 

They won't starve - the hydroponics gardens have been reconfigured to provide the basic staples that will charge the food synthesizers indefinitely. They won't die of isolation or loneliness - Sam, in his new role as ship's counselor, has insisted they stop at every friendly seeming planet they've come across, to make sure that people have had time to socialize and relax. They've lost a few crew members, that way; Garth staying on Were, a planet of wolf-like people; Ava, on a small space colony struggling for survival and desperate for the help her telekinetic skills could provide. They've acquired a few that way, too; Benny, a Vampric trader (and traitor), who has the knowledge to get them safely through this part of space; Timmy, a child they rescued from one of the Ghost Caravans. They've buried a few, too, in between the stars, and in the alien soil of worlds no human being has ever before touched. Every loss weighs heavily on Dean's burden of guilt, even as the new people have given the ship things it needs, things that can help them.

And then, there's Castiel. 

He joined them nearly at the beginning of this trek, seven years ago by their reckoning, and he has since become one of them, family to nearly everyone on the Black Impala. The last of a mysterious race called the Seraphim, Castiel is usually alarmingly alien, but he has the computer fooled. He's not like them, though, this incredibly powerful creature of light and wonder who has tethered himself to Dean's quest for redemption on, apparently, his own quest for the same. He blames himself, though Dean has never heard the whole story, for the absence of the Seraphim in this dimension, and Dean sometimes wonders if it's the same thing, if Castiel managed to lead his people down a rabbit hole they could never escape, and yet they followed him through Wonderland and to their deaths.

Tonight, the possible parallel would almost be a comfort to a Captain who's unsure if he's even doing the right thing. It's a milestone occasion, tonight, a cause to celebrate, but for Dean, every possible moment of joy can now become a moment to entertain regrets. There are ghosts on his shoulders, spirits at his side, and they all whisper of the things he couldn't do. They tell him stories, when he tries to sleep, nightmares he's made up - what became of Adam without Sam and Dean to watch over him - and horrors he knows - the way through a non-point is a path littered with diamond thorns that can shred a ship and all aboard her. 

Yet, he carries on, making choices because they let him now, more than because he is the man for the job. He drags them in his wake and they follow, and Dean can't help but wonder if all his choices would have brought them here anyway. Before him, there are two windows, and one looks out on the stars that someday, maybe, ages from now, will guide their children's children's great-grand-children back to the Galaxy of their birth. The other window looks down into the open arena at the bottom of the recreation area, on a celebration that Dean himself officiated and has now fled because he can't help but think he doesn't deserve to be there. It's an allegory for this endless voyage, in a way. On one hand, there's the journey of a thousand years, on the other, a simple life, finding a world, deciding their journey is done, settling down. 

"Thought I'd find you up here."

Dean's startled, though he really shouldn't be. He paints a facsimile of a smile on his face, turns with a glass in his hand, as if he's just been looking for a second and is on his way back. "Too late to skip out now, Sammy," he jokes, lamely, and he doesn't even get an annoyed eyeroll out of his brother for his efforts. Definitely falling down on the job.

"Wasn't skipping out." Sam at least manages a grumble, but then it's probably easy for him, when his voice has to climb several stories to get from his chest to his mouth. "Came to drag you out of your pity party before Castiel started to worry."

Oh, right. Dean had sort of brought Cas as his date, but not really, for this, he supposes. Well, it wasn't like the Captain had to have a date to officiate a wedding, but someone has to help out when he has to double as Best Man, so date - sorta - it is. 

He's got a lot of onerous tasks as the Captain of a ship that's gone all lost in space, but there's one job that's become his favorite, and tonight, he performed this one awesome duty for his baby brother. "Look at you," Dean says, suddenly full of pride and awe. Sam - his Sammy - has done it. "Married Man Winchester."

Sam does roll his eyes, this time, but they are shining with joy above blushing cheeks when he does. Dean wouldn't have believed this, not really, not the bride, and not his nephew, who is nearly eight, now, and not Sam's becoming an honest man finally in the wake of a new baby's impending arrival. Sam smiles down at his older brother with such utter contentment on his face and, for just the briefest of moments, he gives Dean reason to suspect that they're doing the right thing after all. It doesn't last, and it shows on his face, for anyone - Sam, and maybe Cas - competent to read it.

"Introspection is good, Dean," Sam says, serious and so kind, and Dean would like to tease and call his brother a sweet girl for his comforting, but the truth is, he's grateful for the reprieve from their usual mutual provocation society. Sam clears his throat, and Dean's amazed he can hear without looking the pitying expression on Sam's face. "I'm just not sure it's good for you."

Dean knows that, really. He's gone deep into himself this time. Because his usual masks only cover more usual masks, baring himself, even if only to himself, is rarely safe at all. He's going to need something else, this time.

When he was younger, and always able to cut and run, Dean would go for legal intoxicants and unrewarding sex, the easiest lies he knew, while the rest of his layers resettled themselves beneath his sleazy facade. But now, he has to be responsible, for these people, for their lives and their happiness and their comfort, and also to them, to assure they get what they need even if it isn't always what they think they want. He can't play casual games, not any more, because the rules have all changed.

Including what Dean is hiding in all those layers. He looks down again, into the arena, and there's a dark-haired girl in a winter white dress and she's dancing on the arm of a tall, slender man in a strange, antique, black suit. She's laughing, she often is, so Dean doesn't even have be able to see down three floors to know that. The man with her, though, he's looking up, he always is, and Dean is breathlessly aware, now, that the blue eyes have found him, again and still, even at this distance, even in these circumstances. 

Their eyes always meet, and they follow each other, and their bodies move toward one another like twinned stars orbiting their own gravity well. They've been coming together for years now, probably since the moment they met, possibly since before that, how would Dean know (Dean doesn't do metaphysics, that's all Cas). All this time, Castiel has been becoming that shape that fits the empty space in who Dean is, in who he should have been meant to be. In his way, Dean knows, when he is brave enough to acknowledge it, that he has been growing within Cas, too.

It was simpler before, of course, allies, friends, good friends, best friends. Each step was a fall, but it was only a step, and Dean knows now that it's always been coming to this. He is in love, but he's been falling there for ages. But he is only human, and Castiel is only impossible, and that final step is more than a fall, it's a willful leap, and maybe it's a leap of faith, though it's just as likely to be a drop into madness. 

Dean watches those eyes, and wonders, as always, what goes on behind them, how much they know. And then, he shoulders his demons, and grins like the stars were flung into night just for him, and he goes back to his brother, and his brother's bride, his nephew, and his crew, his life, and his Castiel.

**

Dancing is some kind of largely inexplicable diplomatic thing in Dean's world, so he's always known how to do it, and never ever understood the point. Stilted, forced conversation with hyperactive, protocol crazed, blue bloods, who find his toes far too convenient, has never appealed, but his giant bunny of a brother wanted dancing, and on Sammy's wedding day, Dean supposed he should have what he wanted. Hours pass, loud, cheery hours full of memory and planning and laughter, a rambunctious crowd of proud, silly congratulations. Dean takes his turns on the floor, twirls the bride, and Ellen, Jo, and anyone else who catches him. He and Sam end up doing something that looks more like a fight than a dance, but that's to be expected when they can't decide whether to be cute or funny. Dean balks, however, at anyone attempting to teach Castiel to line dance. 

"I do not have 'two left feet'," Castiel explains in his best frustrated tone, armed with finger quotes and a bass rumble that comes from his shoes. Dean drags him to safety anyway. "My vessel is equipped with a right and a left foot, and even if they were both..."

"Body, dude," Dean corrects by way of interruption. "We call them bodies, okay?" It's a reminder he doesn't need, that no matter how close to Castiel he is, this is as close as they get, because Castiel only looks human. 

For all intents and purposes, Cas is a giant ball of light, shoved inside a construct he extrapolated from random human DNA. He's not going to be one of nature's dancers for the same reason his voice doesn't sound like it belongs to that body, and he finds personal space to be more of a theory than a practice. He's immense, bigger, taller, _more_ , than all of them, and only pretending. 

"This kind of dance is a party trick, Cas," Dean explains. "You don't have to be able to do it any more than singing Karaoke." That was an experience Dean can't really decide on. On one hand, Cas's voice is completely pleasant, and on the other hand, his song choices... yeah, Dean can't really talk - he sang a song older than his ship without even the music. He stands there, instead, mildly amused, and tries to show Cas why line dances are a terrible thing to happen to a good party.

"We should dance," Cas suggests, suddenly, and Dean's not going to be able to get out of that. For one, he did sort of bring Cas as his date, and you have to dance with your date at least once. For another, Sam's making annoying faces at him from across the room, eyebrows and long nose trying to suggest directions without a word. Then, of course, there's the fact that Dean just doesn't want to. He can let himself hold Cas for awhile - he can let himself pretend.

"I think you're supposed to be more relaxed," Castiel says, tilting his head to consider Dean's stiff arms and wary feet.

That's just like Cas, so much that Dean starts chuckling, full of wonder at the crazy beauty of an alien who doesn't understand them, and who just keeps trying anyway. Cas's bright blue eyes are dancing as Dean looks into them, delighted with the laughter of his friend. "What would I ever do without you, Cas?" Dean asks, because this is a question best asked by someone who never wants to know the answer.

"I hope," Cas says, somehow playful, though Dean doubts anyone could see the change in his expression, "that we will never find out." 

Dean's breath catches on that kind of commitment. There's something so perfect that he just stops, or maybe, just maybe, the whole universe stops around them. "Can I kiss you, Cas?" Dean asks, so careful, because he knows he's flirting with a line, not just with his friend.

Cas blinks at him. "Of course, Dean," he says, as if it never occurred to him that there's a question there, as if he's been merely waiting until Dean thought it was time.

Dean tries to stop his hands trembling, but he thinks the only result is his heart trembling in his chest instead. He's supposed to be so brave, fearless even, and he's looked down the barrel of a loaded gun before. This, though, is more terrifying than anything he can remember, because this is feelings, and Dean knows his grasp on emotion is fickle at best. This can be - should be - all that he'll ever want, but only if he gets it right.

He leans down, forward, trying to oppose that head tilt of Cas's just right, to make this the best first kiss in the history of time, so soft, so slow. And then Cas snorts, a sound he always makes when Dean frustrates him, and there's a breath across Dean's lips, and then there's nothing else, nothing but warmth and touch and Cas.

Their lips brush, light and mildly dry, a grade school attempt, juvenile, but blindingly vivid in its innocence and wonder. Dean can't breathe as Cas pulls away, considers him through a slitted gaze. "You're supposed to close your eyes," Dean whispers, and then his hands find Cas's elbows and he's pulling the other man in, wanting, for a real kiss this time.

It's wet and deep and crazy, and Dean's gasping for breath before he even knows what he feels. It's like kissing lightning, he supposes, like making out with a summer storm. Their tongues thrust and tangle, one wild with inexperience, one mad with longing hunger. It leaves the realms of suitable for public consumption faster than the Black Impala can travel; one moment they're just joined at the lips, and then their bodies are pressed tight together, so close and moving closer, like they can climb inside each other and find a place to live.

Dean only becomes conscious of their audience when he hears that impossibly shrill whistle of Ellen's remarkably close to his head. He pulls away from Cas like surfacing from the water, trying to catch his breath, trying to recognize the world that's gotten different. For someone who usually knows where everyone in the room is, even if he's asleep, it's an astonishing experience for Dean, and he looks at Cas with even more amazement than before.

The Seraph has his tongue tip on his bottom lip, and his eyes are distant, dreamy but analyzing at the same time, and Dean's made him look like this, like corporeal reality has gone fuzzy around him. Dean wants to dive right back into Cas, right now.

"Idjits," he hears, and, "finally!" and, "called it, ten creds!!" and then Sam's loud, obnoxious, "Get a room!" 

They should stay, Dean realizes. They should break it up, catch their breaths, discuss this at a more appropriate time, when they're not meant to be hosting someone else's wedding. They should.

"That is an excellent suggestion, Sam, thank you," says Castiel, somehow so smug Dean feels a little like he's missing something somewhere. And then, between one thought and the next, they're in Dean's quarters.

Alien, he remembers. Not human, not even a little bit. The teleportation thing is something no person he's ever heard of can do reliably, and considering that his brother can make things float around the room and the closest thing he has to a sister can physically talk to computers, it's not as if Dean's scope is small, or anything. He really ought to take a step back.

Dean's a little crazy, tonight at least, maybe always has been. He steps forward, instead, kisses the Seraph again, kisses him like he means to keep kissing him forever (because he does). It's probably a bad idea, but right now, he's almost sure it's the best bad idea he's ever had, and that's got to be enough. Cas kisses like he can taste Dean's soul and loves the taste, and Dean wants to drink him down, slow and savored like good whiskey.

Just when Dean's starting to get used to the idea that kissing Cas is okay, that this is something they can do, just when his body is wondering where they go from here, Cas starts tugging at the top of Dean's black and green dress uniform. The Captain grins with delight and no little relief. His cock's getting interested in what's got a good chance of being foreplay if Dean plays his cards right...

He pauses, instead, because this isn't a game, not this time, and all his cards are going on the table. This is the kind of relationship that he can't lose, and if taking it to the next stage is going to take it away, he'd rather go with celibacy and fantasy (Cas's body is...yeah). "Cas, I... this is..."

"Dean, for once in your life, could you let something good just happen?"

Dean chuckles at the exasperated tone in his best friend's voice, shakes his head in bemused humor as Cas's fingers finally find the closures on his uniform. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up," Dean confesses, because he can with Castiel, because he's told the alien things he could never find it in him to tell another living soul.

Castiel smiles. It's faint, but oddly understanding. "When we met, I told you I had been searching for you." His voice is fond and reminiscent, and Dean thinks that day was one of the good ones, so he can see it. "I thought at the time I was seeking humanity, but Dean, what I found was you. I wish to be with you - I _want_. And for my kind, that in itself is miraculous."

Dean melts. Emotions, deep and sincere and hidden, bubble to the top and boil over. His lips slide over the Seraph's lips, then down the stubbled line of his chiseled jaw, across his slender neck, down to the pronounced hollow of his throat, just peeking out where that stupid necktie he is wearing all wrong reveals it. Dean's fingers work it open, shaking and fidgeting in their haste. This, they have waited so long for this, and right now, it's so easy, Dean can't even think why.

Castiel gasps when Dean's tongue trails along his clavicles as he reveals them, presses against Dean, shivers. They try to get closer together, wriggle as if to get the air out of the way between them. Dean's relief os as tangible as his delight when he feels the heavy press of Cas's erection against his hip, and he doesn't even try to stop his hand confirming. He presses a palm hard against the front of those strange trousers Cas wears, wishing them gone as Cas's hips thrust, hard and involuntarily, toward him.

"Fuck," Dean mutters, thrilled beyond polite words.

"That's what I've been trying to suggest, yes," Castiel says, and they both laugh, because that, that was funny. 

Clothes finally begin to fall away, and Dean had forgotten, somehow, how beautiful the trim lines of Castiel's chosen form are. They've been throwing each other around the gym for years, but they rarely see each other this bare, and that makes it all the more precious and intimate. "You are exquisite," Castiel says, tracing artless kisses across the expanse of Dean's broad chest, fingers digging into the muscles of Dean's shoulders.

Dean would have objected to anyone else using such a term. Cas makes him feel it, though, a precious thing, valuable and wanted. "I'm an idiot," Dean says in bewildered wonder. "We coulda been doing this for years!"

Cas chuckles. "Perhaps," he says, "you will learn to ask for what you want?"

"From you, buddy," Dean says. "Maybe."

"Well, we can hope," Cas says, and he silences Dean with a kiss.

Dean works a hand between them, tugging at the strange old-style closures on the pants that keep his from Cas's secrets. "You don't have tentacles, do you?" he teases.

Cas actually giggles. "Humans," he says, and Dean is laughing, too. 

Sex has never been like this before, but Dean realizes, before his clothes are decorating his floor, that this isn't sex. Oh, it's sexy as anything, ever, but it's fun, too, and intimate, moments of sharing things they have always shared and things they have never shared before with anyone. There are the expected sexual aspects, hands on nipples, tongues and teeth on rarely bared skin, the line of Cas's thin hips, the shape of Dean's defined collar bones. Then, there are the shockingly erotic things, the slide of Cas's ridiculously long fingers through Dean's close cropped hair, the ticklish laughter startled out of Cas by a kiss placed just above his navel. 

If there is anything about this that was as easy on Dean as his fantasies of this moment had been, maybe it's in the way they breathe, because he had always imagined their breaths coming together as they learnt their way around each other. Everything else is so much more than he could have dreamed up, everything, from the dampening weight of the other man's cock in his hand, to the sensual sting when Cas discovers that Dean enjoys the occasional love bite around his shoulders. 

There is a turning point, where Dean stops being able to think. Their bodies, always moving closer from the moment they met, finally fall into that gravity well together, pulling them in, with kisses deep and desperate while their hips slot like they were built to do that. Their cocks press tight between them, side by side, the slide of soft skin over nearly painful hardness almost all the friction they need in the desperate push and pull of their first time together. Cas is moaning and writhing, the most beautiful, intensely astounded look on his face, and Dean can't stop watching him, can't even concentrate on anything at all except the way Cas feels, finally naked in his arms, and the way he looks, a breath from orgasm, a step from completion.

Dean reaches between them, catches both their cocks in his hand, gritting his teeth to hold himself in. He isn't going over the edge first, not until he sees the magic moment when Cas - his serious, strange, perfect Cas - finally loses control. "So fucking gorgeous," he murmurs. "Love you, so much."

"Dean," Cas whispers, and then he mumbles something in a language Dean will probably never know. 

Dean tightens his grip, tugs once, twice. "Please, Cas," he begs. "I got you," he promises. "I..."

"Dean!" Cas comes with a shout, body arched in rigid bliss, silver white curls of come spattering Dean's hand and his stomach between them.

Dean swears and pumps them again, muttering Cas's name like a prayer for mercy, as he lets go, and falls hard, riding the Seraph's orgasm along with him.

"Fuck," Dean breathes, more than a little astonished, and he collapses next to his alien lover, completely amazed.

Cas just blinks, his eyes glowing in the light of Dean's quarters, sparkling white that dims only slowly back to their normal blue. "That was... much more than I thought it would be."

Dean smiles, and reaches over to grab some tissues from the night stand. He props himself up to clean them up. "Good, though?" he asks, and he hasn't been nervous enough to wonder that since he was 18. 

Cas gives him a smile, a full one, his lips still swollen from Dean's kisses, his eyes still too bright. "Better than cheeseburgers," he decides, "even yours."

Dean laughs, full of joy and so happy, amazed that he's been able to hide this much emotion this long. "I fucking love you, you crazy bastard."

Cas smiles back, and he says it again, that strange phrase in what is, quite probably, his native language. "All my love, forever," he says, then, and Dean is too thrilled to even think it is a translation.

**

Their post-coital cuddling - which Dean would not admit to under torture; he would claim it was just a prelude to the next round, so there - is interrupted before Dean's anywhere near done with it. 

"Captain to the Bridge," comes Kevin's voice over the intercom system, sounding nervous and too awake for, what is it, two in the morning? 

Dean gets up and goes to find clothes while Cas complains vigorously about the uselessness of human children who are called prophets but can't tell when it's a good time to leave people alone. Dean toggles the intercom to find out if he has time for a shower, but made sure not to hit the video feature, because no one needs that, especially not his reputation.

"What's up, Prophet?" he asks of their human translator. 

"Got a call from some guy called Crowley," Kevin says, bewildered and vexed. "It was about an hour ago, but it took me a few to translate it."

"Crowley?" says Castiel, and he is instantly up, on high alert and, though still naked, suddenly holding his sword. Somehow, Dead just does not want to know where that was. 

"Where is the guy?" Dean asks, warily.

"Next sector," Kevin says. "Why?"

"Because he's not to be trusted," Castiel answers, firmly.

Kevin doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then, he clears his throat and says, "Uh, sorry. Why don't I finish translating his message and have it for you in the morning?"

Dean listen intently, and he's pretty sure that's Charlie chewing Kevin out in the back ground. He chuckles. "Tell the Queen to slow the ship down and we'll sort out the neighbors when civilized people are awake."

"Thanks, Captain," comes Charlie's voice over top of Kevin's. "Oh, and hey, Cas, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Cas frowns. "Charlie, I'm not entirely certain even I am capable of doing something you wouldn't do."

Charlie laughs and Kevin groans and Dean just snickers and shakes his head. "Winchester out," he says, and drops the connection.

Cas sighs and loses the sword where ever he found it. It's like he just summoned and unsummoned it and Dean really sort of wants one. "I hate Crowley," Castiel says.

"Let's worry about him later," Dean distracts, and he hopes he sounds at least a little seductive. "Where were we?"

Castiel rolls his eyes, but he kisses Dean anyway, and those kisses are really the whole point.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was unbeta'd, so if you notice ANYTHING, let me know. Feel free to nitpick, I am REALLY new at this. Concrit preferred, obviously, but hey, I eat flames for breakfast.


End file.
